Dyson game test and evaluation

Yesterday evening I ran across a very nice little game called Dyson. Its design and game play are unique and pleasing in a minimalistic way. Installation requires about 30 megabytes of space and went with out any problems.

Game play, though pleasant suffers on the tiny screen of the AA1. I played the game on my desktop with a 26' display and was much happier with it. Though playable on the AA1, I have decided to remove it after my test... and as the game is still in development, I will continue to watch for updates and keep it installed on my desktop computer.

Toshiba Portable External Hard drive

I picked up a Toshiba external hard drive today (160Gb) model HDDR160E03X to try out one Acer Aspire One. It was at a good price, and the only one left so I grabbed it.

Unfortunately, the Acer Aspire one has insufficient power output via the USB ports to use this drive. The AA1 will detect the drive insertion, and it appears momentarily, but then goes away with the message there is a problem with the USB device. Subsequent tests on other full size laptops shows that the drive is good, and will function. So if you plan to use and external portable drive, you would probably do well to look for another model rather than the Toshiba.

Truck Dismount Game on the Acer Aspire One

I have yet to add any games to the little AA1 yet, so I thought I would try something. A odd little game that I have played off and on over the last few years is Truck Dismount. The physics of the game are quite good, and the game is a fun little game to play in a twisted sort of way. You crash a truck into a wall, and with the presence and positions of ramps, you try to damage the crash dummy as much as possible for points. The crash dummy can also be placed inside, outside, on top or in front of the truck. Anyway, the game play is simple and game is small download, that can provide hours of mindless entertainment. The game Truck Dismount can be downloaded here

And here is a sample video capture.

Using Ultra VNC on the Acer Aspire One

One of the programs I have used pretty consistently over the years is VNC. It is open source, and works reliably. There are several variations of VNC but I prefer Ultra VNC. It can be downloaded from here.

The installation went smoothly, choosing all the default options. With VNC I can connect to workstations in my home network either locally or across the internet. Below is a short demo of Ultra VNC on the AA1.

Enabling L2 cache on the Atom processor

I found a interesting registry edit at the awesome netbook to enable L2 cache on the Acer Aspire one.
Here it is in a nutshell:
Using regedit locate the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\SecondLevelDataCache

Edit the value changing the 0 to 512. A reboot is required before the change is effected. This should provide a slight boost in performance.

Windows Media Encoder 9

I've been looking around for a video capture utility to try on the Acer Aspire One. I decided to first test Windows Media Encoder 9 to see what results I might get. I'm familiar with Media Encoder already as I use it to stream scanner radio feeds at my site Scanner411.

The download and installation went without a hitch. By default when launching Media Encoder it starts in Wizard mode. I selected Capture Screen, and picked the medium quality output. Here are the results with just some sample navigation as test.



I think this will be acceptable, and Media Encoder will also allow you to just capture a portion, or specific window on the screen.